Writing about characters from the Second World War is second nature for comic book writer Jean-David Morvan.
Irena Sendler, Simone Lagrange, Ginette Kolinka, Madeleine Riffaud… So many resistance fighters, deportees whose lives the Rémois has retraced through its bubbles.
But it was undoubtedly his meeting with Madeleine Riffaud which was the most decisive.
“I don’t know what I would have done during the war, but on the other hand I know that I would have fought the war with Madeleine,” confides Jean-David Morvan.
It is also thanks to her that he wanted to write this fresco on the history of the Red Poster shootings.
In 2022, he signed with Madeleine Riffaud an online petition for the entry into the Pantheon of Missak Manouchian, the leader of the famous “army of crime” so named by the Germans.
“Madeleine was already in the Resistance when they were shot.
She remembers the Red Poster very well, it is the moment when she joined the armed resistance.
The Manouchian group was his star,” slips the screenwriter from Marne.
Also read Who are Missak and Mélinée Manouchian, this couple of resistance fighters who will enter the Pantheon?
The comic strip “Missak, Mélinée and the Manouchian group” appears this Friday, February 16 by Editions Dupuis, five days before the couple Mélinée and Missak Manouchian enter the Pantheon.
Eighty years after being executed at Mont-Valérien with twenty-two other members of the Francs-tireurs et partisans de la Main-d’œuvre émigré (FTP-MOI), the Armenian poet will indeed enter the crypt with His wife.
Both survivors of the Armenian genocide, they landed in France in the 1920s. Missak joined the resistance in 1940. He was shot on February 23, 1944 in Suresnes.
“This is the first time a stranger has entered the crypt.
This is the beauty of this pantheonization because he fought for France.
It’s true patriotism, he loved France and defended it to the end,” recalls Jean-David Morvan.
A symbolic act announced by President Macron last June to honor this couple of resistance fighters, Armenians and communist activists.
A page from “Missak, Mélisée & le groupe Manouchian” by Jean-David Morvan (screenwriter) and Thomas Tcherkézian (designer).
Editions Dupuis
In the wake of this tribute, the Méca (House of the Creative Economy and Culture) of Bordeaux has just inaugurated an exhibition “Madeleine Riffaud.
Résistante(s)”, taken from the comic strip by Jean-David Morvan and Bordeaux resident Dominique Bertail, retracing the years of Resistance of journalist and poet Madeleine Riffaud (until June 28, 2024).
Several panels also house some plates from Jean-David Morvan's latest work on the Manouchian group.
This Thursday, February 15, an exhibition is also due to open at the Mémorial du Mont-Valérien in Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine), until November 30, 2024, in partnership with the Musée de la Résistance nationale and Éditions Dupuis.